


The Thing Under the Desk

by AnonAlpaca



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire | Pokemon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire Versions
Genre: Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 21:55:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19777222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonAlpaca/pseuds/AnonAlpaca
Summary: On a quiet, uneventful evening, Maxie gets a shock to the ankle by something that's made a home under his desk. It'll take both Maxie and Archie to capture the creature, or creatures...However, Maxie's under the impression that he's the only one afraid of bugs.





	The Thing Under the Desk

In the middle of a house, at the edge of a town, which was currently at the edge of a rainstorm, Archie lay back on the hammock he’d brought indoors, reading. Gently, he let the swinging of the hammock slow to a stop - leaving him alone with the ambient, muffled drumming of rain, and the dull light from a nearby lamp.  
“Owwww…” came a very quiet voice from the office.  
  
For a second, he looked up.  
  
“Er...dear?” the voice repeated - or rather, squeaked.  
  
He kept flicking through _The National Pokemon Index_. Probably the wind, he told himself.  
  
 **“** ** _ARCHIE!_** **”**   
  
But _that_ definitely wasn’t.  
“Coming, love!”  
With a loud bang, he slammed the book shut, jumped off the hammock, and headed for the office, flinging the door open with no idea what was on the other side…  
  
Well, anyone that walked in could immediately tell what happened. That _clunk_ noise he’d heard a little earlier was probably Maxie jumping up onto the office chair, which had spiralled across the room like a spinning top and landed squarely in the corner. Maxie himself still clung to the chair’s back like a barnacle - but, to give him credit, he was trying to get down onto the floor without alerting the _thing_ under the desk…  
  
“Let me guess,” Archie said, smiling, “You found a spider?”  
  
“Actually,” Maxie retorted, huffing indignantly, “the spider found _me.”_  
“Hmm…” Archie murmured, bending down to have a good look at what on earth Maxie was staring at. The poor man looked like he’d just seen a ghost - which, come to think of it, was a possibility.  
  
“Be careful, I wouldn’t be _up_ here if it didn’t bite me or...something,” Maxie explained, tentatively pulling his legs back up off the floor, “Or _electrocute_ me, rather.” He watched as Archie fit himself under the computer desk, fumbling through the jungle of wires…  
“Can’t see much down here…”  
“Trust me, it’s there!” Maxie assured him, passing him his Poketch after turning on the torch, “...whatever it is,” he mumbled as Archie took it, holding his breath.  
  
“Sure, I will,” Archie replied, turning the spotlight on -  
  
And saw a mass of yellow creatures, clustered around a frayed wire - they crawled around it on little writhing legs and bit into it with tiny fangs, showering tiny sparks onto the carpet below. Tiny white circles could be seen attached to the wires higher up, which looked suspiciously like eggs.  
Archie didn’t know how many eyes looked up at him at once - but it was, safe to say, too many.  
  
“Oh - yeah, uh, wow,” he reported, crawling quickly backwards out of the cave of Joltiks and bumping into the filing cabinets, “I think I see our problem... ”  
“How many are there?” Maxie asked.  
  
“There’s...” Archie replied, flashing his torch again, “...a lot?” he squeaked. Maxie found company quite quickly in the coward’s corner of the room - well, clearly he wasn’t so much of a coward now that Archie was here too, backed against the wall with him.   
“I don’t want to scare you, but...I think they’ve been breeding,” he whispered.  
“Good _gracious_ \- ” Maxie gasped, somehow shrinking even further away from the desk - briefly he hung on to Archie as a shield, before he seemed to realise what he was doing and let go.  
  
Both of them watched, eyes wide, as a single Joltik emerged from underneath the desk, eyes also rather wide.  
“Nothing we can’t handle,” Archie replied, “Hah…ha…”  
Another one - and another one, and another one followed it, scurrying through the carpet and crawling on top of each other.  
  
“See, look at that...thing,” Archie said, shuffling away from it a little and then a lot, “So... _small._ ”  
“Archie, if you say it looks adorable - “  
“If I said it looked adorable,” Archie fired back, “would you not step on it?”  
“I’m not sure,” Maxie answered, knowing if one of those bugs got on his leg, he’d go straight back into fight-or-flight mode.  
The Joltiks looked up at them, probably knowing these apex predators were a bit too spooked at the moment to kill them. Maxie’s hand brushed against Archie’s, and to his surprise, he gripped it back rather hard.  
  
“Perhaps we should...call an exterminator?” Maxie suggested.  
“ _No!_ ” Archie snapped back indignantly.  
“As in an exterminator that doesn’t... _kill_ them - “ he corrected, “A remover, that’s it!”  
“That’d be me.”   
“ _Dear?_ ”  
But it was too late; Archie had already fled the room and left him alone with the creatures. He could hear him scampering up the stairs to get something. Hopefully, it was the vacuum cleaner. Or maybe he was going to go get the Crobats -   
  
“Got it!” Archie declared, coming back into the office with two large towels.  
“...What are we doing with those?” Maxie asked quietly, expecting Archie to pull something else from out behind his back.  
“We’ll just...throw this on top of them,” Archie explained, miming exactly that, “And then we’ll scoop them up and take them outside. Easy peasy!”  
So, grabbing a towel, Maxie and Archie got in position - Maxie stood like a cowboy ready to fire above the growing crowd of Joltiks in the carpet, while Archie crouched underneath the desk, ready to spring forward.  
“Ready?”  
Maxie gulped - “I suppose we should...count each other down.”  
“Good idea…” Archie confirmed.  
  
“One.”  
“Two.”  
Archie took a deep breath, and tried to channel the ‘lover of all Pokemon’ side of him.  
“ _Three!_ ”  
  
Both Archie and Maxie leapt onto the Joltik - Archie practically grabbed the fuzzy mass like it was a solid object in a gloved hand, and Maxie immediately set to work slamming the fabric down on any that were scuttling away.   
“Get back here, you cheeky little - “  
Eventually he managed to drag the towel into a ball with them all inside - with it as far away from his face as possible, he poked one last Joltik back inside, and looked over to find Archie doing the same.  
Both of them heard annoyed, muffled squeaking noises coming from inside the towel, and with their makeshift traps in hand, they strode out of the office and never looked back.  
“There,” Archie reassured Maxie, “No battling needed! That wasn’t so bad, was it, luv?’”  
He poked the towel-ball a little and watched it wriggle on its own, just to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.  
  


* * *

  
Eventually, both of them found a telephone pole nearby their house, and they shook the Joltik away into the suburban jungle - though, of course, some of the bugs thought they were clinging to the fur of a Pokemon instead of a towel. Archie talked of how he felt bad about leaving those bugs out in the rain - Maxie said they were probably used to it.   
  
Maxie, understandably, wasn’t willing to go straight back to his office, even if he was _ sure _ all the Joltik were gone - he followed Archie to the couch instead, invited there by a book and a pile of cushions. He kicked back and relaxed, as Archie would have said. Carefully, he rested his electrocuted ankle on the ottoman, which was now wrapped in more fluffy bandage and Burn Heals than were probably necessary - either way, he didn’t care. It felt...nice.    
  
It felt especially comfortable now that Archie had sat down next to him - and, as they’d done so many times before, they leaned into each other. They were a part of the furniture, so to speak.   
  
But Maxie thought, though, that Archie wouldn’t notice him taking deep breaths, to try and get down off that adrenaline rush. Of course, Archie always noticed.   
“...You alright, by the way?” he asked, “Seriously, you’re white as a sheet.”   
“I’m fine,” Maxie answered quickly, “Just a little...shaken, I think,” he added, after he’d gotten and understood that soft tone in Archie’s voice. He kept taking deep breaths - obvious deep breaths, until he knew he didn’t need to anymore.   
“Who wouldn’t be?” Archie told him, smiling warmly.   
  
“You, apparently,” Maxie whispered - and while Archie was distracted, he crept his fingers up his neck, just like…   
“ _ Gah! _ ”   
...A leftover Joltik.   
  
Archie chuckled quietly for a while after he first jumped, especially after seeing the satisfied look on Maxie’s face - it was a hearty laugh, sprinkled with wheezes. ...And it was also contagious.   
“You should’ve seen your face when you saw the nest, honestly…”   
“A’ight, I confess, I’m scared of bugs too,” Archie explained once he’d caught his breath, “But it’s just the ones that, like...merge into one thing when there’s a whole hive. That’s what creeps me out, I think? It’s the way they all move at once...”   
“Fair enough,” Maxie decided, “So I find one absolutely enormous bug, I call  _ you _ \- but if I find a hive of  _ small _ bugs, I call Courtney.”   
  
“Sounds like a plan,” Archie agreed, and finished with a long, catlike yawn. He felt Maxie give him a kiss on the cheek that lasted a while, and as he lay back on the sofa, Maxie’s arm wrapped lazily around his shoulder.   
“You know,” he said in a quiet, soft tone, “I think whatever work I was doing can wait until tomorrow.”   
“Mmhm,” Archie confirmed, laying his head gently against Maxie’s shoulder - in return, Maxie laid his head on his.   
  
“...Thankyou.”   
  
_ Ah, you learn something new everyday. _

* * *

  
And so, tomorrow, the work still waited. It had to wait because the one computer in the house was taken up by Archie - that wasn’t to say Maxie minded, though.   
  
He’d almost completely forgotten about the events of yesterday - the only thing that reminded him of it was the fluffy bandage he had kind-of-not-really forgotten to take off, and even that was easy to ignore when wrapped in a warm throw blanket. 

Right now, he was reading ‘You Stay or You Stay’ - apparently the memoirs of an ex-Team Rocket member, who’d escaped the organisation by the skin of their teeth. He had to say, the pen name of ‘John Doe’ was either a stroke of genius, or the most unoriginal -   
  
**_“OW!”_ ** came a voice from the office.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> hey, y'all, hope you enjoyed this short domestic fluff fic  
> i've been trying to for ages, but I never really found the inspiration until now :)
> 
> (if anyone wants to do anything based on any of my writing, you're free too btw!)


End file.
